US Finance World

If you only have a small deposit, good news! Mortgage rates are coming down.

It’s been just over four years since the credit crunch froze credit markets and sent share prices and property values plunging in the UK, US and other major economies.

Most financial pundits put the exact date when financial markets started seizing up at 9 August 2007. Since then, the UK has suffered from what’s been called a ‘mortgage famine’.

As the credit crunch took hold, banks stopped lending recklessly (remember Northern Rock’s 125% Together mortgage?) and started tightening their lending criteria. As a result, mortgages have become increasingly hard to come by — particularly for first-time buyers and those with low deposits.

As lenders cherry-pick the safest borrowers, a large group of potential home-buyers has been left behind.

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In recent years, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have been growing in popularity when building an investment portfolio. You can buy them from any discount broker, they have no minimum purchase amounts, and offer lower expense ratios than their mutual fund equivalents. Here are some . On a case-by-case basis, Ive been switching over some of my holdings from mutual funds to ETFs. But a practical question arises Do you buy them with market orders or limit orders? This is in the context of buying and holding ETFs for a certain asset allocation, not for active traders.

Briefly, a is a request to buy an ETF at the best price available at that instant that someone else is selling it for. It will usually execute virtually instantaneously. On the other hand, a is an order to buy a specific price or lower. If you cant get that price, it will not execute.

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Dont get caught out by this silly mistakes.

Life insurance is a crucial financial product for many of us, yet we are still liable to make daft mistakes when arranging our cover. Here are five particularly silly mistakes we should all endeavour to avoid.

Money is seriously tight for many of us at the moment. According to the financial information firm Markit, 40% of households saw their finances deteriorate between July and August, and with the cost of living likely to continue to rise, every penny counts.

As a result, it can be tempting to ditch your life insurance policy, to save a few quid every month.

Of course, not everyone needs life cover anyway. If no-one will lose out financially as a result of your passing, then life insurance is unnecessary. However, if you have a partner or kids who will miss out as a result of your monthly salary disappearing, then it’s not just important, it’s essential to have life cover! Rea

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Now that Hurricane Irene has done its worst, thousands of homeowners are expected to begin filing billions of dollars in insurance claims — a process that’s lately become more complicated and costly.

In recent years, insurance companies have started to pass more of the financial burdens of natural disasters to policyholders. Many insurers now require mandatory hurricane deductibles in coastal areas; some have raised those deductibles from 1% or 2% to as high as 5%, raising out-of-pocket costs for policyholders. Meanwhile, many homeowners are discovering that even with these deductibles, their policies may not cover all the damage caused by a hurricane or tropical storm. “Families will have to dig deeper into their pockets,” says J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America.

These developments can make an already difficult situation tougher.

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If you have some serious spending on the horizon, which plastic friends should you turn to?

Many of us use credit cards in order to accrue points or build up rewards from our loyalty scheme of choice. Perhaps you collect Nectar points, in order to get money off your shopping, or make use of a cashback credit card, so that your spending is rewarded at the end of the year with a nice cheque.

And these cards are great, so long as you pay off your balance in full each month. But what about if you have a big purchase on the horizon, a wedding, holiday or baby on the way? Which cards are best to cover these larger costs?

When I was planning my wedding, there were quite a few large costs to cover, so it didn’t take me long to decide to sign up for a 0% purchase card.

As the name suggests, these are cards which will not charge you any interest on the purchases you make for a specified period of time. So

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